A dead man lay in a pit on the roadside. In his arms, a scroll. In his chest, a bloodied dagger, and on his chest the sword-and-gold emblem of the Guild.
“A man at the Guild claimed he was a messenger,” Rick said. “He said we should attack the encampment at noon, but he also said that the landslide we faced a few days earlier was actually a ‘malicious’ trap. If he wasn’t involved, how could he have known that? And then he tried to poison my tea with nightshade.”
“That sure sounds like a horrible messenger.”
“Pern, Colin was no messenger at all. He was a company spy that killed this man, and replaced him,” Rick knelt by the corpse and unraveled its scroll.
***
QUEST 3223
The band of mysterious mercenaries known as the “Vulture Company '' by the commonfolk have long since brought destruction in its wake. Adventurers, local officials and key Guild suppliers are numbered among its victims.
It would please Guildmistress Risa to disband this Company by selecting uncompromised Adventurers to investigate the Company’s list of clients, with a reward of 1,000 gold marks. Fresh intelligence indicates that the Company may mobilize and infiltrate the Mazevale, attacking various targets including those referred to as “Armormaster,” “Thundervortex,” “Hearthkeeper,” and “Some Guy”.
A map of the camp has been enclosed, but the Company’s numbers are higher than first believed. It may be best to delay the request and prioritize an evacuation of high-risk persons who may fit the descriptors—
***
Fwwp!
Rick ignored the words and tore away the map. “Colin wanted us to strike at five, and said the King’s Guard is supposed to relieve us afterwards. But that’s probably all a setup. We’d charge in, get ambushed and die.”
“If someone wanted to kill me that badly, I’d have been happy to duel them.”
“But someone like the ex-Mayor for example—you think he’d fight fair? No, he’d hire someone else to get rid of us two ‘human waste.’ I can only wish I was rich enough to command a band of assassins to do my chores… I’d go so far as to bet the avalanche back then and the ‘Reaper’ we saw in the woods were both the Company’s handiwork.”
“That’s pretty sharp, Rick,.” Pern said, as they strolled further down the lane. “And your genius plan to dodge a suicidal charge in the day is a suicidal charge in the night?”
“I’m walking to their camp, yes.”
She leaned forward and narrowed her eyes. Then smirked as if Rick had told a silent joke and she was the only one who understood.
“I trust you,” she said simply.
If they walked a few minutes west, they’d be back in town. If they walked a few minutes east, they’d reach the merc camp. Moonlight struck Pern’s plate and gave her a ghostly gleam, her blonde hair a stream of wil-o-wisps.
If Pern was a ghost, Rick looked like a man accursed. His hair was scraggled, his shirt unkempt and he stared a fixed distance at an open space above a meadow. The only part of him that wasn’t messy and horrible was his brain; he had used Water Resistance S to prevent a terrible hangover.
“You’re turning back,” Rick ordered.
“I won’t,” Pern said, as she fiercely bent towards Rick. “I don’t care if the quest’s a trap.”
Rick saw the fire in her eyes, and remembered just what nuisance Pern could be. So persteringly loyal, so annoyingly full of faith, so frustratingly one of the few that he cared about. He swallowed his rebuff and spoke:
“You can join me. But you have to swear to three three rules. Rule one: you get hurt, you run. Two: I run, you run with me. Three: I get hurt, you leave me behind. ”
“Those rules are a little bit… What happens if we both get injured? Then we’d have to stay and fight, right?”
“Then we’re boned,” Rick said. “Swear to these rules, or before we fight any bandits you’ll be dueling me.”
Pern circled around him. Rick was swordless, though he had a heavy backpack and a pocket full of metal coins. Her step was slow and cloying, like a cat’s.
She counted once for each loop. “One—two—three! I swear to these unreasonable rules, as sure as my name’s Pern Arienette. Glory to the Adventurer! Glory to the Guild!”
***
Rick and Pern were hidden inside a sagebrush, and Pern squashed another mosquito that dared chew on her thigh. An hour passed, and then Rick and Pern were now hidden inside a prickly, mundane, much-accursed, insect-infested sagebrush. They had not moved. It was as though Rick and Pern had married and this was the only home they could afford.
Meanwhile, The “Vulture Company” favored towering box-shaped tents for its hired knives. These tents resembled coffins stuck into earth, inane reminders that the Vulture mercenaries brought Death, lusted after it, and that if they couldn’t quite be Death themselves they’d at least try to be his pale imitators .They had even built a “grave” for their scouts to perish in if their camp was attacked—a long trench that formed a square around the camp, about three-feet deep with a boyish sentry peering out from every side.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Between the bush and the entrenched tents was an open field, and crab-like crockie elmens scurried about and worried the mud with their claws. On these plains there were the rising earth mounds that they’d constructed, there was the grass, and that was all.
“I thought we’d charge in and win through some kind of trick,” Pern said. “Since visiting an enemy camp usually means, you know, attacking it.”
“‘Stealth’ is the word of the night,” Rick said.
“Stealth!?”
“The quiet word of the night,” Rick shushed.
Pern brushed a dark leaf and resisted an urge to sneeze. She should’ve known that Rick wasn’t interested in fighting; he had finally taken her up on her offer to buy him a weapon at this literal eleventh hour, doubled back to town, banged on the door of Monique, weaponskeeper, in the middle of the night—and used Pern’s funds to buy some garden spades. Garden spades!
“Follow me,” Rick gestured.
They advanced to a bulging mound a crockie had constructed. It would take a quick six steps to vanish into the trench from here, but without cover they’d be spotted right away.
“You’ve got the Green Thumb skill now, don’t you?” Pern whispered “Grow out the trees and we can hide behind them!”
“If a tree grows into a forest, it might not make a sound but it will absolutely get us noticed,” Rick said. “And besides, I’m not really used to that skill anyway.”
“But we just need a few more feet…” sulked Pern. The sentry watching their side was at the perimeter’s center, while Rick and Pern were hidden at the camp’s edge.
It wasn’t really the Adventurers' appearance that was the problem, but their movement. A stationary silhouette would be difficult for the scout to see, but a flickering human shape would be detected and shot through with a half-dozen crossbow bolts. Only a grove of trees could provide the cover they needed, or if not trees, then perhaps another monster-made mound.
’I’ve got two brilliant, S-Rank ideas: we could launch an attack and hit them before they know what’s coming. Or we could wait here with our mosquito friends for another hour and hope that a crockie digs another hole,” Pern muttered.
“I like that idea,” Rick said. “You be the crockie.”
He handed her a spade.
“Huh?”
Rick shoveled down and into the hill, til he had carved a tunnel that a man could just about shimmy through if he walked sideways; Pern clawed away at the dirt walls behind him so she could squeeze through with her jut-out chestplate. After another aching hour they’d constructed a short trench that ran right up to the sentry’s.
“He can’t see us here. And for the whole time we’ve been in the sagebrush, he’s never looked into his own trench or paced it.”
Rick cleaved through dirt and they’d made it into the ditch. They both crouched and prayed the scout wouldn’t choose this second of all seconds to look left.
“What happens when he finds the hole?” Pern whispered.
“He’ll probably think a crockie did it. Come on.”
They mounted the pit, and crawled into camp, tasting coarse earth and bitter grass. Night watchmen paced the tents with bright torches for light, backs straight and with none of the lolled sleepiness of the lookouts. But their sense of duty made them easy to predict, and Rick had a map that revealed all their routes.
“We’re at the barracks… more barracks… more barracks… then weapons storehouses, a store for supplies, another barracks here… and just after this—” Rick whispered as they passed the tents, and then: “We’re not there yet, but we’re in the clear. No watch is coming for a quarter hour, and there’s no reason for other mercenaries to be out after their curfew.”
A tent unzipped, and a piercing-clad man with his knees stuck together hopped out; Rick quickly jerked Pern behind a long wide shrub. The stumbler’s face was wrenched, his chin piercing bobbed, and he fumbled around his leather clothes.
The man walked to their shrub — lowered his pants — and…
Pssssssss…
“Ahh…” He sighed. The wayward assassin was peeing.
He had aimed far enough from the bushes that the Adventurers were spared from his spray. But the veteran wasn’t spared from the sight of his two targets hidden demon-like in the shrubs.
“Ahhh… ah!!!!” His hoarse voice picked up steam. Then—he actually was steaming.
“Thunder!”
Electricity arced through his liquid into him; all his hairs stood on end and he collapsed, leaving a smoked body that lay between the barracks’ tents. Rick tensed, but no one else emerged.
“Tch.” Rick muttered. “A watchman’s coming by in ten minutes, and that’s a bad thing now.”
“Oh well. I guess our cover’s blown,” Pern said, her hands dramatically splayed. “At least we can launch a surprise attack while they’re sleeping.”
Rick put a spade in a splayed hand.
“...Dig?”
“Dig,” Pern sighed.
They shoveled the latrine into a shallow grave, rolled the pierced man into it and smoothed over the soil. A lone finger stuck out, and Rick stomped it in.
“This’ll buy us some time.”
“The soil looks unnaturally churned. They really gonna think crockies did it?”
“Nah,” Rick said. “But who wants to dig up a latrine?”
As they moved forward they finally ducked into a grease-smelling tent. The man on the cot was asleep, balding, middle-aged, and roaring. His belly tossed like jelly for every grumble and spittly snort, and a single black streak of ink bisected his fading hairline. Underneath his bed was a flock of books turned upside down. The Cook of Munchy Crispies… The Three Must-Eat Meals… Pern idly picked up The Slice of Life and paged through it.
Opposite the cot was a huge wooden pot with a heavy metal tray for a lid. Rick took a spare blanket at the bed’s foot, and stretched it over the hard cold earth. He slid the tray off, dropped it on the soft cloth, and inside the jar was a pale yellow ooze.
“Smells like pancakes.” Pern whispered. “What is that? Some kind of potion?”
“It’s a potion that makes pancakes when you heat it,” Rick said.
“Potion that makes… isn’t that just pancake batter!? We came all the way here for a midnight snack?”
Rick ignored her. “I can’t believe the cook sleeps in the same tent where he prepares his food. Life as a Vulture Company Chef must be tough.”
Pern turned a book page, looked at the cook, turned a page of the book again. She picked up a long knife that was designed for something other than butchering and stared.
“This one isn’t a cookbook, Rick! It’s a guide to slaughter: when he’s on the battlefield, he tries to carve people up like meat!” Pern hissed. “Let’s kill him and shout out, and then face the rest of the company out in the field. They won’t have time to organize, so they’ll be easy to attack.”
“Rejected.”
“Rejected!?”
“Rick. I know you always look for the best in others, but—”
“I don’t look for the best in others; I simply remember. About monsters, about people and about partners and past feelings. As for the Vulture Company, make no mistake: what I remember about it is two long years of hate. I can afford to wait another day if it guarantees my revenge.”
Rick took the red handkerchief from his pocket; it was still soaked in the belladonna tea. He dropped it inside the cauldron and it floated there like a dead fish.